


Arkham Mysteries

by Inkribbon796



Series: Arkham Mysteries [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Birthday Post, Blood, Cults, Death Threats, Human Sacrifice, Lovecraft AU, M/M, Magic, Manipulation, Mental Instability, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, SNAKE BOY, Themes of cosmic horror, Vomit, Yig the snake god, baby gays, child kidnapping, entry level nihilism, fictional cult, gore mention, kid!Janus, kid!Remus, somewhat graphic depictions of death, vomitting up a demon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24908371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkribbon796/pseuds/Inkribbon796
Summary: Whispers of a horror time forgot and monsters fueled by twisted magic. The district of Arkham is home to powers old as the birth of the universe, and as new as modern technology.
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders, dukeceit - Relationship
Series: Arkham Mysteries [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1802365
Kudos: 12





	1. Snake in the Grass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a little town outside of Gainesville, Florida children and adults go missing. Little Remus Prince becomes another childhood statistic, but he does not die like others before him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blood and gore warning! It’s Remus’s birthday and here’s a Lovecraft Au and there will be death in this one, but not to Remus or Janus. They are my babies.  
> Guess who’s getting back into the Lovecraft mythos after Color out of Space? It’s me, I love cosmic horror.  
> So because I was bitten by some plot bunnies after that short I did during Darkstache Week, I wrote some more. When will I update this? Hell if I know maybe every third week, maybe once every two months. It depends but all of them will be compiled here instead of linked together shorts.  
> Enjoy.

It was a humid August day, the dusk of a new moon was about to rise up into the darkening sky.

Remus angrily kicked the wild flowers, angry as he tried to blink the tears from his eyes. He just wanted to play with Roman and his friends. But Roman always acted like he was the literal plague and at best ignored him, or at worst, pushed him away.

So he was walking around the woods behind their house, angry and sad, when he heard something.

Remus stopped, the sound was like a sob of pain mixed with some type of high pitched hiss of frustration. Looking around a bit for a good sized stick and immediately went to check the source of the noise.

Climbing over a downed tree trunk, Remus almost stepped on top of someone lying in a net trap, the boy’s arms trapped to his side, little metal studs painfully digging into his side and arms. What froze Remus wasn’t the fact that there was another kid lying in the trap, but that they didn’t have any legs. Instead there was a long yellow snake tail, patches of green scales like freckles on his body.

The snake boy immediately looked at Remus and hissed at him, one eye a dark brown, the other a bright yellow.

Remus just stared at the boy, so captivated by the sight of him. The snake boy then looked in another direction and gave a desperate hiss, almost screeching out. It was enough to shake Remus from his trance and he started working to get the boy out, almost getting bitten in the process.

It took a little bit and the boy started helping the instant his arms were free. Afterwards he let out an indignant hiss at the trap, as if screaming at it.

“So pretty,” Remus couldn’t help himself and touched where the boy’s legs should be. His scales were cold and smooth instead of slimy. Running down the snake boy’s spine was a short ridge of brown, white, and black feathers that bristled at the touch of Remus’s hands.

The snake boy startled and dragged him into the tree stump, there was a hole that had been made by a couple animals before them. It was full of mushrooms and bugs and Remus was instantly enchanted by them.

“Ooh, this is one’s slimy,” Remus said.

The boy slapped his hand over his mouth. “Shhh!”

Remus noticed the palm of his hand had some scales on it and in a typical Remus fashion of not thinking and wanting to see what something tasted like, licked his hand. It tasted like blood and swamp mud.

“Ugh,” the snake boy hissed.

At that moment, four men came out of the bushes, making the boy press Remus closer to the squishy bottom of the rotting tree trunk. Remus watched in amazement as the bright yellow scales started to turn a mottled brown, successfully camouflaging him with the tree, and Remus with the tree in the process.

“The fuck he go?” One of men snarled, Remus finally noticing that the men all had rifles.

“Couldn’ta gone far,” one of the others reassured. “Look at all this blood.”

Remus noticed a particularly sharp stone lying in the trunk. He grabbed it and braced himself to lunge out and stab the hunter who was wandering closer to the mouth of the trunk.

There was a loud growling hiss and the men all turned away from the trap.

“What was that?”

“Probably a mama looking for her baby, with any luck.”

“Stay quiet,” the snake boy whispered. Then he let out a hissing caterwaul.

Remus heard the sound of a rifle being cocked back, he readied his little stone as someone knelt down and looked at the two of them. His eyes traveled around the hole until he noticed them.

“There you are,” he smiled.

Remus screamed and drove the stone into the man’s face. He screamed, the rifle fired, almost hitting one of the other hunters.

Suddenly the hunters had worse to deal with than a small child with a sharp stone and an injured naga in a tree trunk. Six large nagas, each twice the size of a human, surged out of the tree line, moving impossibly fast. The small yellow snake boy surged out of the trunk and wrapped around Remus, coiling his tail around him and forcing him to drop the stone. Remus watched as the four hunters were attacked, bullets bouncing off hardened scales like tiny pebbles.

Their screams were burned into his mind, grown men strangled until they were unconscious and then tied up for a better purpose.

The largest of the six nagas slid over to the two boys, Remus’s new friend’s coiled muscles tightening around Remus just a hair tighter. She just stared at them and the naga boy hissed warningly at her.

That got an amused chuckle out of her, she lowered down closer to his level. “What do you have there, little Janny?”

“Mine,” Janus hissed, still protecting Remus.

“Little hatchling,” the serpentine humanoid smiled in such an odd way that made Remus reflexively giggle a bit, almost like his soul was trying to leave his body. “He’s a bit too big for you to eat.”

“You’re pretty,” Remus smiled, starting to reach out to touch that long, pretty black hair.

“Mine,” Janus hissed, coiling a bit tighter around Remus, hugging Remus so that the boy’s arms were pinned to his body. “I want to keep him.”

The woman looked behind her, talking to one of the other nagas in a language Remus didn’t understand, but it made this brain feel fuzzy. He liked it, giggling a bit. The other nagas laughed and Janus the naga let out an angry huff.

“May I speak with your pet?” The larger naga asked Janus. “I promise not to eat him.”

Janus began to uncoil himself, but kept a hand on Remus’s arm.

“Hello little monkey,” she greeted.

“Hello, ma’am,” Remus greeted politely, giving a toothy smile.

“Such a pleasant little thing,” she hissed lovingly.

“My momma says I’m a little monster,” Remus smiled confidently, a huge smile on his face.

“Hmmm,” she hissed, curling his hair behind his ear. “Really? What type of monster?”

Remus shrugged, his hands going up a bit, “She never told me, ma’am.”

“Would you like to come with us?” She asked. “We’re having a party to celebrate, we’ll eat your friends.”

“They’re not my friends,” Remus told her, picking up the still-bloody stone. “I stabbed one.”

“You are just a delight, aren’t you, little monkey?” She chortled.

“I don’t want him eaten,” Janus told her.

“We won’t,” she promised, and Janus dragged Remus along to follow the group. He followed them into a cave that led out into a cavern with a hole carved into the ceiling. So that when the moon was highest in the sky it would be visible, regardless of the time of the year.

There was a group of thirty snake people, but only one other child, and they instantly tried to bite Remus when he got close. Janus hissed at them and then dragged him away, presenting Remus with a little necklace made of leaves, flower stems, and sharp stones that caught the light of the moon.

For the first time in Remus’s young life he felt included in something, that he was  _ wanted _ . More wanted than anyone or anything had made him feel in his life

As he sat, watching a ceremony that would culminate in four people being strangled and ripped to shreds to be eaten, blood covering a stone altar whose purpose Remus’s young, yet untainted mind couldn’t fathom.

Truthfully, Remus’s fate wasn’t to go home when he met Janus, but he wouldn’t fight the nest’s decision. He was already home.

~::~ 13 Years Later ~::~  
  


Remus was humming a little tune to himself, holding a large stick that looked more like a mace with several nails and sharp objects driven through it.

“Hey, buddy,” someone suddenly behind Remus called out. He was armed. “It’s too dangerous for you to be here. ‘Sides it’s private property.”

Remus turned to look at him, itching the edge of his mustache. “Huh?”

The man could almost feel like something was wrong, like a particularly smart fish looking at a flashy lure. But he couldn’t exactly place, but he looked at this young man half his age, staring at a patch of swamp as if he planned to swim in crocodile-infested water.

“You shouldn’t be here, you have folks I can call?” The man asked. “This area’s full of gators.”

Remus let out a full body chuckle, smiling at him. “Oh I’m planning on it.”

Somewhere behind him the man heard the rustling and snapping of twigs. He started to check his gun as he turned to look behind him, seeing a dark shadow moving somewhere in the distance.

“Hey!” Remus shouted, running towards the man with his mace, the man cursed and started to raise his rifle towards him.

The man barely was half turned when something large slammed into him from the direction he’d just been facing. He was knocked to the ground, gun flying to the ground, discharging harmlessly into the forest. The man screamed as he felt something like a snake coiling around him but a flawed hand at his throat, ripping at the soft flesh of his throat to kill him even faster.

Remus stepped closer, his mace hiding behind his back like it was a surprise. He smiled as he kicked the rifle into the small, nearby swampy lake.

The man was weakly fighting as the large, yellow serpentine body continued crushing and constructing. Words bubbles in his throat but because of his state he couldn’t make words.

Remus leaned in, stroking Janus’s side as he spoke to the man, “Shhh, don’t fight, it prolongs it, and I hear a brain hemorrhage sours the taste.”

He finally took a couple steps back and leaned on his mace as he watched.

Janus’s victim didn’t last much longer the claws mixed with a crushing strength of serpentine muscles against a human rib cage . . . well, it would have been laughable to even admit he stood a chance.

Because Remus was standing close enough, but not close enough to be a threat to an apex creature’s newest meal, he got blood spattered on him as he watched another human die.

After Janus was done feeding, he looked over at Remus, his iris narrowed slits.

“How was he  _ ma moitié _ ,” Remus grinned, waving his fingers at the naga.

The yellow naga slid over, coiling loosely around Remus and leaning down to kiss him. Remus felt all the tension leave his body when their lips touched.

“You did wonderfully,” Janus praised, tracing the bottom of Remus’s face.

Remus let out a giggle cackle, jumping up excitedly, “Do we have to head back to the nest? It’s been ages since I stretched my legs.”

“Well we do have a bit of time,” Janus smiled. “Can’t let my favorite pet go stir crazy.”

The human let out a wild giggle that reeked of madness, “I’m your only pet, Dee.”

“True,” Janus’s right eyebrow arched. “I do always like to keep you on your toes. Let’s go before I fall asleep.”

“Yay,” Remus scrambled over part of Janus’s body, already starting to scramble down the path. As he walked, taking a long, slow stride, the nearly silent sliding of a large snake in the forest turned into the soft footfall of feet on dirt.

Remus turned around to see Janus following him, walking backwards, the naga looking human but with an air of not looking quite right. The left side of his face and hands covered in green and yellow scales. He left out a trilling bird call, hissing through his teeth. “Always such a looker  _ ma moitié _ .”

“Focus on the road, I’d love for you to trip and gash your head open,” Janus’s hiss was almost a warm purr.

“I walk just fine,” Remus laughed, right before tripping over a large rock. Janus let out a higher pitched laugh.

Remus groaned a bit at the sharp pain in his ankle, but smiled at the laughter from his serpentine boyfriend. The nagas were a sadistic bunch, and Remus could only feel a similar giggle bubbling from his body, it felt so good to hear Janus laugh.

Janus let out a warning hiss right before someone’s voice said, “You boys okay?”

Janus quickly turned the left side of his face to hide his scales, burying his hands in his cloak. An older woman was coming down the trail.

Jumping up, Remus stood in front of Janus, “Oh we’re fine, just tripped is all.”

“Oh, I just heard some screaming is all,” she said. “I was just worried, is all. Do you boys live near here?”

“Yes,” Remus answered, trying to hide his nervous giggle. “Just moved in, city life is so stifling.”

The old woman just smiled, “It’s so good to see young people moving back into the village.”

“Yeah, well,” Remus smiled. “We’re okay, do you need help back to the village?”

“What are you doing?” Janus hissed demandingly, the hairs on the back of Remus’s neck stood on end in dangerous discomfort.

“Just trust me, it’s a town,” Remus whispered, and walked over to the woman.

“Aren’t you a nice gentleman?” The older woman smiled, but squinted her eyes a bit when he got closer. “Have we met before?”

“Maybe?” Remus shrugged, starting to head in the direction the woman had come from.

“Yes, you’re Miranda’s boy, always such a sweet boy,” she smiled pleasantly as something painful began to boil in Remus’s heart. Something that the human thought he had killed and buried years ago.

“I thought you went off to the big city?” She asked.

“Surprise?” Remus grinned, she smiled back.

They walked for a bit, the woman talking and Remus trying not to scream and alert more humans. Janus was just silently watching him, following at a distance, still looking human enough to fool most actual humans. Eventually it was all over, the woman lived towards the edge of town and Remus waved her goodbye, refusing to come inside. He felt like his skin was trying to crawl away from him.

Finally the door was closed and Remus stared at the town, barely visible through the trees.

“Are you quite done?” Janus huffed, clearly angry.

“Where are we?” Remus asked.

Janus was quiet for a second, clearly upset and angry. “I don’t know, we try to stay away from this place, it’s too big for us to take.”

“Why stay away? You could glut yourself on this town for decades and no one would know.”

“Because I found you near here,” Janus commented.

Something uncomfortable stabbed at Remus’s heart, of a small boy whose only playmate never wanted him around.

“Let’s burn it to the ground,” Remus growled maliciously.

Whatever reaction Janus expected from the human, it clearly hadn’t been willful arson.

“It’s unsafe, our nest is too close,” Janus warned.

“We’re due to move again, and the new moon is coming up, the Grand Leader was complaining yesterday about not having enough sacrifices,” Remus’s grin was impossible to wipe off his face, he gestured to the town in the distance. “Here’s more than we could ever need. Yig would be so pleased.”

“Enough!” Janus hissed, his features more monstrous. The naga grabbed Remus by the arm and began pulling him back to the nests. “What have we told you about invoking his name? You are still human,  _ never _ forget that!”

Once they were far enough away Janus turned back into his proper form. “You are not leaving me, you swore to me with your own blood. You are  _ mine _ , Remus, those filthy humans can’t have you.”

“I don’t want to go back, I want them dead!” Remus shouted back, bravely looking into the naga’s eyes. “I want them all dead.”

Janus seemed to calm down a bit, stroking the side of Remus’s face. “Yes, of course. I’ll talk with the others, but I’m not making any promises.”

Remus leaned into the touch, trying to calm the bloodlust inside of him. He would be back, with or without the Grand Leader’s permission. The town would burn, and maybe the smog in his heart would finally lift.

He followed his love back to the naga nests, he’d find his brother again and wet his blood on the new moon altar.

Or he would die trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look me in the eyes and tell me Remus wouldn’t be into snake boy Janus.


	2. Hole in the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Detective Jackie thought he was used to city crime, burglars, rich men who believed they were above the law, murderers. But this is different, this string of murders isn’t the work of just one serial killer. It’s something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Jackie’s birthday.  
> WARNING!  
> Another gore warning, for people getting torn apart and the aftermath is shown. Also this one has a man puking up a glitchy parasitic freeloader too. The squeamish should beware.

Jackie was walking out of his car, cursing under his breath, he knew what this was even before pulling up to the scene. The house was abandoned, a hotspot for urban explorers, drug users, and cultists. Graffiti tagged almost every available surface of the house.

As he walked under the police tape he walked over to the patrolman sitting on the bottom step, looking like he’d seen the very gates of hell.

“How bad’s this one?” Jackie asked him.

“What kind’a sick fucks are these guys?” The patrolman whispered in horror.

“Any kids this time?” Jackie held his breath a bit.

“I don’t know, I barely got a look before,” he stopped and dry heaved a bit at whatever memory he had unwillingly conjured up in his mind.

“Take a breather, I’ll take a look,” Jackie told him, and started heading up the short staircase to the missing front door.

“Put on a mask,” the patrolman gagged. “It smells horrible in there.”

“Thanks fer the warnin’,” Jackie took a steadying breath and stepped through the gapping doorway, the dark hollow acting like a gaping maw, trying to swallow him whole.

Even at the doorway there was a foul stench already trying to burn its way into his mind. He coughed but the smell only clogged up his senses even more. The acrid miasmatic odor of death, burnt flesh, and something still alive rotting. It was faint, but still strong enough to choke him.

He was dragged back out and coughed until his stomach settled and he could put on a filtered mask. It helped him breath and with his arms shaking a bit, he walked back into the abandoned building. There was the expected clutter from an abandoned building. The dead and dying leaves, trash left by previous occupants, broken and used needles. All of it would have to be collected as evidence, because they didn’t know what was part of the crime scene and what was the cries of the city’s unwanted but still human citizens.

There were already people in masks gathering blood samples. It was the room furthest into the house, windowless and looking more like a prison cell than a place fit for a human to stand in. There was a pile of five dead bodies, their left eyes gouged out and their throats slit. Huge patches of skin and body parts were missing from the rest of their bodies, entrails strewn across the room in what seemed like a random pattern. They barely even looked human anymore. What skin was left on the bodies had writing carved into it.

Jackie was transfixed by the scene of death in front of him, each of the bodies had writing carved all over the body, their nails cracked and broken and bleeding. Some of the writing was in English, a bit in Gaelic, and others in a myriad of different languages. All of it was the scribbling of a madman.

“Tell me we have somethin’,” Jackie demanded, feeling horror and anger pulse through him.

“Maybe,” one of the other officers replied. Then he pointed to one of the women in the pile. “But that’s the mayor’s granddaughter.”

Jackie took another look at the woman, “Shit! This mess was already absolute shite! Now we’re gonna have ‘im breathin’ down our neck.”

“He wants the body as soon as possible, he doesn’t want her anymore cut open than she already is,” the officer warned.

“Well glad I’m not the Chief,” Jackie decided, finally tearing his eyes away from the bodies to look around the room. “Any leads this time?”

The other officer frowned, “We need to ID the other bodies, but we’ve got a higher profile victim. Bet she was either kidnapped or knew where she was going.”

Jackie finally noticed a perfectly circular hole in the wall, right at his eye-level. Staring at the thing he realized it was unnaturally . . . perfectly circular. Barely bigger than the human eye. Just looking at it made him feel weird. Maybe it was the death and horror all around him, the stench still echoing in his brain, or the stress of the bodies slowly piling up from case to case with no suspect or real motive in sight.

“Hey, shithead!”

That finally shook Jackie out of the daze he was in, his hand barely an inch away from the wall, as if to put it in position to brace his weight on the wall to look through the hole.

Instantly disorientated, Jackie whirled around to look at the officer who had called out to him. His back hit the wall with the hole.

“The hell is wrong with you?” the officer shouted. “You almost stepped on the bodies!”

“I don’t know,” Jackie felt like his head was fuzzy, like it was full of those toy buzzing magnets, and his mouth felt like it’d been stuffed with cotton.

“Jackie?” The officer sounded way more concerned all of the sudden, carefully walking towards him. “Please tell me you went drinking before you walked in here?”

He meant to huff and walk over to the officer and say: _“course not, how stupid do you think I am?”_

Jackie didn’t make it past the first syllable, his first step his foot slipped on what felt like air and he blacked out before his brain before he could register he was starting to collapse.

What he did know is that he woke up, back flat on the ground, his mask off and staring up at the darkening sky. There were also two paramedics rushing over. There was a high pitched, scratching echo in his ears that made his ears hurt.

“How long has he been out?” Someone said and that echoing got worse. His brain felt like it was itchy, which seemed impossible.

“Little bit before we called,” someone answered.

One of the paramedics knelt over him, announcing, “He’s awake.” She began talking but his brain got fuzzy. He needed to get back up and figure out what crazy freak was killing people.

Jackie was pushed back to the ground, “Stay down, you’re bleeding.”

“Nam’nawt,” Jackie slurred and tried to get back up again before he was hit by vertigo and flopped back onto the concrete.

“Who the shit are you?” Someone yelled. “This is an active crime scene!”

Jackie felt something in him almost spin with nausea and vertigo, the arguing was going on somewhere else but Jackie was too rattled and ill to understand it.

“I’m a doctor!” Someone yelled in a German accent. “I specialize in zis.”

“He’s bleeding from the ears, we all do,” one of the paramedics retorted.

“Und you vill treat ze symptoms und no’zing more,” the doctor replied as he uncorked something and placed it under Jackie’s nose.

If Jackie thought he was ill before, he was wrong.

Horribly . . .

Tragically . . .

Unapologetically **_wrong_ **.

Jackie bolted up and turned to start vomiting. But it wasn’t his twelfth coffee of the day and a cheeseburger. It was black, with flecks of a million different shades of green. It felt like his stomach had become a bottomless chasm for the vile, putrid ichor. It smelled like the inside of the house. Like rotting, hellish death.

Then it all stopped and Jack realized he was shaking, he doctor was carefully pulling Jackie away from the contents that had been swelling inside of him.

“It is finished,” the doctor told him. “You vill need to rest, get some vater, und not try to drink your life away.”

“What was that?” The officer shouted. “What did you drink? I was joking before about you being drunk!”

Jackie turned back to his fellow officer, realizing that his ears had been bleeding, “I’m not drunk, but now I wanna be.”

The group was interrupted by a scratchy type of laugh, almost like a laugh being scratched by inhuman claws. Jackie looked over in horror and felt like his skin was physically trying to crawl away. He realized that whatever had been inside of him was a moving, pulsing thing . . . and it was _laughing_.

That laugh had been the echo rattling around in his skull back inside the house, and a glitchy clawed hand was emerging from the shaking, glitching mass.

Jackie didn’t think, and if he had it probably would have made him lock up and stare in horror. But Jackie screamed and whipped out his TASER, shooting at that sludgy ichor.

There was a sound, more akin to a radio being out of tune, if it was trying to find a station from hell. Sparks came from it and then it was gone, and the smell vanished with it.

“Wow,” some exclaimed, the accent sounding a bit more like Jackie’s. A man with long green hair and what looked like all four card suit symbols on his forehead sat in front of him. Behind him was another man in a dark blue vest and square glasses, he was glaring down at him.

“Marvin, you can’t run up to an officer like that,” he reminded sharply.

“You’re just upset I can smell talent,” Marvin huffed.

“No one can smell talent, it’s a metaphysical and circumstantially-dictated concept,” the other man corrected.

“It’s called a turn of phrase,” Marvin muttered, “grow a funny bone, man.”

“We’ll continue this absurd discussion later,” the man in the blue vest said. “I am Professor Logan Sanders, these are my associates: Dr. Henrik Schneeplestein, and Professor Marvin Magnus.”

“What are you a professor of,” Jackie asked, the guy looked younger than him.

Marvin gave a huge, mischievous smile, the kind he’d found on some young pre-teen he’d caught last week with a lighter and a bottle of cooking oil, “Chemistry.”

“As I said,” Logan cut in again, pulling out a tri-folded piece of paper out of his vest pocket. “We’re part of an organization by the name of MISP from Miskatonic University, we were called in by the Mayor and Police Commissioner to help with your investigation.”

He then unfolded the paper to show it was signed by both people.

“Okay, but we have enough hands on this case as it is,” the other officer refused.

“Do you know what that thing was?” Jackie demanded, pointing at the ground where that glitchy sludge had been.

“Ve have some guesses,” Henrik answered. “But zis is not the work of one killer. Zis is ze vork of many, und zey are desperate und vill kill again at exactly ze next full moon.”

“Is this a fookin’ cult?” Jackie felt dread course through his body.

“Yes, and we have been tracking them for years now, we thought they were still in Massachusetts, but we were wrong.”

“So yah have a name fer these freaks?” Jackie demanded.

“That is something we should discuss away from the scene of the crime,” Logan insisted. “Away from where the perpetrators can eavesdrop on us.”

“Are they still here?” Jackie demanded, looking around.

“Hey,” Marvin shrugged, “anything’s possible if a pool of black sludge can glitch out of existence.”

Jackie had to admit he was right, even though the detective wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t physically seen it for himself. So the team worked for the next few hours to collect as much evidence as they could find. The three new members of the team agreed to wait outside so evidence wouldn’t accidentally get any more contaminated than just existing in the abandoned house had already made it.

They would find the people who had done this, and Jackie wouldn’t rest until they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s Anti!


	3. The Kingsport Demon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When dancing with the devil, one should come prepared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Marvin’s birthday.

They were finally on a new mission, and Marvin was excited. Jackie was coming with him. The detective was working with them only part time since he still was working as an actual detective, and having eyes and ears closer to the ground was better for them.

Jackie had been part of their group for a couple weeks now but he was spending most of his time with Henrik and Logan, finding ways he could get into actual fistfights with Eldritch abominations.

It wasn’t working, but Marvin found his enthusiasm endearing all the same.

At least he would if their new recruit wasn’t spending all his time with them. While Logan wanted to dismiss what Marvin did, call it alchemical bastardization or mad science, Marvin liked to call it magic. Taking what those monsters and the people driven mad by their influence, and use it for good.

Marvin was almost jumping as he walked over to Jackie’s apartment where he lived with his brother. It was getting late, but Marvin ran up the stairs in just a couple bounds and rang the bell.

Jackie’s brother answered the door, looking Marvin up and down, “Yah Marv?”

“Yep,” Marvin said, as he was let in. “Yer Seán right?”

“Yeah,” then Seán turned to shout deeper into the apartment, “Hey, shitebag, yer friend’s here.”

Jackie came racing out of the hallways wearing a red hoodie and a blue face mask over his eyes. “Thanks, don’t burn the house down.”

“Who the fook yeh talking ta?” Seán spat goodnaturedly, and almost slammed the door on them.

“So where we headed?” Jackie asked as the two headed towards the subway.

“We’ve got a lead on the cult, but we need some bait,” Marvin explained.

“We gonna stand on the street corner wit’ some _“End is Nigh”_ signs, an’ feck it be grand?” Jackie asked as they managed to head down into the underground tunnels.

“No, the city cultists are a bit smarter than that,” Marvin explained as they waited for the train. “Sides we wouldn’t get the right people. No they’re attached ta people already exposed to the chaos ‘a the world. So I have myself booked fer an magic show and yer gonna be my manager.”

“Is this safe?” Jackie asked.

“Fook no,” Marvin cackled. “Last time we pulled this in Philly, Logan an’ I got inta fight.”

The train arrived and they jumped on, Marvin going more into depth with him during the short trip to the other side of town.

When they got to a small theater there was a sign that read: _Red Community Playhouse_. In an alleyway, Marvin quickly covered up the markings on his forehead with makeup, and Jackie never knew how to ask about them. They looked like tattoos but something about them seemed off . . . not right.

“Yah sure yer okay?” Jackie asked.

“Come on, if Logan can act straight fer the five minutes we drove through Dunwich, I can pretend ta be a shite magician,” Marvin boasted proudly as he checked himself over in the mirror.

“Provided you aren’t too loud to give yourselves away,” a woman called to them from deeper into the alley.

A woman in a black and red dress was standing by a back door to the theater, “Professor Magnus, Detective McLoughlin, your show begins in five minutes.”

“Uh, I think yeh have the wrong people,” Jackie tried to misdirect.

“The owner says you have five minutes to actually impress him, or he won’t see you,” she smiled, gesturing to come inside.

After a look between each other they followed her side, door secured behind her as Marvin was talking to the producer. He was to be a second opening act for a small time comedy troupe. The owner would be in the audience and Jackie was told to take a seat with the audience. Jackie kept eye contact with Marvin as long as he could and a minute later he was on stage with a huge smile.

“Greetings everyone,” Marvin smiled as he popped out a top hat from inside of his coat. “My name is Marvin the Magnificent!”

There was a short clapping from the crowd that Jackie joined in with. And then someone sat next to him.

“How do you think they found him?” The man next to him leaned over to ask as Marvin smiled and started working the crowd.

“Who? The theater?” Jackie glanced over, not wanting to take an eye off of Marvin for safety’s sake.

“Now I think everyone’s seen the old trick ‘a pulling a rabbit out ‘a hat,” Marvin smiled as he pulled a white rabbit half out of a hat before gently letting it hide back inside the hat. There was a bit of talking from the audience, a couple people reacting to the rabbit.

Jackie noticed that the rabbit had the same card suit markings on its forehead that Marvin normally did.

“No I mean those stuffed stunts up in Arkham,” the way the man spoke made Jackie think he was smiling.

Jackie felt his blood chill, looking over at the young man next to him, dark lines running underneath his eyes.

“But I won’t bore you with that, besides,” Marvin smiled as he reached his arm into the hat, “I like cats more.”

Marvin pulled out a white puppy with those red suit markings on his forehead. There was a chuckle from some, a gasp from others, and Marvin slid the puppy back in. “Sorry folks.”

He pulled out a small white chicken. Then finally a fluffy white cat.

Jackie’s attention was split between Marvin and the creepy guy next to him. He leaned in and whispered, “Afterwards come into the back, the big guy likes what he sees.”

Then he got up and pulled out a phone as he walked away as Marvin was doing some card tricks, turning his cards into wooden cards, the crowd clapping. Then his set was done and he disappeared backstage, Jackie rushing to catch up with him.

Marvin was all smiles as Jackie rushed over, “How’d I— what happened?”

“I don’t know, some weird guy came over an’ told me we could see the owner,” Jackie answered.

“Did he do anythin’ ta yeh?” Marvin asked as they headed back to the green room but were led towards an office next to it. A man in a red shirt and a black vest, tie, and pants. He smiled at them as he put down a fluffy white quill pen down.

“Professor, Detective, I am Phantom,” the man smiled, staring at Marvin. “And you’re the little Houdini that likes to pretend he’s a big powerful mage and pervert the laws of nature.”

“Yah perverted them first,” Marvin dared.

Phantom looked amused instead of insulted, but for all Marvin knew with these creatures it was the same emotion. “We were here first.”

“Hold up who is this _“we”_ then?” Jackie cut in.

Phantom laughed, “Oh, Detective, you shouldn’t worry your little head and ask questions you don’t want answers to.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want the answer,” Jackie died.

“So young and innocent,” Phantom cooed. “Not even broken in yet. I’ve seen big, bad strong men like you weep like worms and devour yourselves from the inside-out. It‘s a delight to watch.”

He let out this devious chuckle, “Fine, we want to put a nice little bet down, Magic Mike?”

“Not my name, an’ I’m not making deals with yeh,” Marvin refused.

“Don’t care, and yes you are,” Phantom grinned. “Your mind mind belong to another but that doesn’t mean we can’t play a bit. So let’s make a wager: your friend stays sane when I tell him how hideously outnumbered you are, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Why should we trust yah?” Jackie demanded.

Phantom smiled in a mocking way, as if he was thinking, “Well, let’s see, you and your pals are desperate, your boss is desperate, and the full moon is next week. So take my deal, before I decide to make a new one.”

“Okay, fine,” Jackie cut in, and Marvin looked terrified.

“See?” Phantom said. “Your friend gives his blessing, take a seat.”

Jackie and Marvin pulled over some chairs and Phantom leaned forward, “So big guy, what do you think I am?”

“Some guy with a love of eyeliner and the colors red and black?” Jackie asked.

“At least try,” Phantom warned.

“Yer part of the cult?” Jackie responded.

“Which ones, there are millions around the world, did anyone die with their throats blown out?” Phantom looked thoughtful.

“No,” Marvin admitted.

“Then I had nothing to do with it,” Phantom smiled. “It was one of the others, but if you guys are talking about those sloppy murders then it was probably that damn glitch and his insects he keeps bound.”

“What insects, does he control bugs or something?” Jackie asked.

“No he means people,” Marvin corrected. “When these . . . _things_ talk about insects they mean us. We’re nothing ta them, it just looks human so we stick around it long enough ta get what it wants.”

Jackie felt the chill of a wounded mouse looking at a fox, things about the _“person”_ in front of him now looked off. The grin almost looked plastic, the being was a little too still, the skin around its eyes didn’t wrinkle even a little bit.

Phantom looked entirely too smug, “You like it? I studied some of the worms and insects that crawl through here. Took me some fifty worms to find a suit that fit, but it’s still hard to move in it to be honest, had to make a lot of changes or it would have split apart at the seams.”

“That’s a person?” Marvin’s voice was a little hushed in shock.

“Yah killed people!” Jackie spat. “How could yah do that?”

“Tell me, do you grieve when a bug hits the windshield of your car? Or you see roadkill in the streets?” Phantom asked dismissively at Jackie. “You, your entire species from the most trained secret agent, to the lamest child, are those insects. You are the raccoon about to be hit by a car. The car doesn’t care about you and the people in the car sure don’t notice you.”

“They think an’ breathe, they matter,” Jackie debated.

“I could have you turned inside out until you became a different person,” Phantom threatened. “I’m only humoring you because making deals with humans gives me some aspect of joy. That and there’s been a bastard freak that has been slinking his claws into my territory. He’s only known as the _Glitch_ to us, he likes to pick off isolated worms and have them slit their own throats like stuffed pigs.”

“Oh, detective,” Phantom smiled at Jackie, “attempting to arrest me will only result in me needing a new suit.”

Jackie was about to threaten him back but something in his body felt like something was turning him inside out for a second. His body reacted and fled before he could command it to fight like he’d been trained and wanting to do. He ran for the trash can right outside the office.

Marvin turned to look at Jackie in concern, and glanced back at Phantom who was standing next to him. “Isn’t he fun? Do tell me if he doesn’t blow his brains out, or at least if he’s a fun crazy.”

“Why humor us?” Marvin asked.

He leaned in closer to Marvin, pointedly staring at the door that Jackie had disappeared through, smiling, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone appreciate what you do for once? All I need to do is give him a little push and you’d have that. He’d come to you for help and guidance, someone to teach your perverted good magic.”

“I don’t need you, and I know better than to trust you,” Marvin spat.

“If at first you don’t succeed,” Phantom smiled. “Have fun at the full moon, that Glitch can get a little fun. Now get out before I decide you’re not useful.”

Marvin took the opportunity to leave, mostly because they’d planned for cultists, not meeting something a bit . . . older.

Jack had finally stopped throwing up so Marvin started leading him back out, The detective was pissed, angry at having to leave but he agreed that they weren’t prepared. They could bring the group to attack the thing after the moon ritual had been stopped.

On the way home, it was late and the train was mercifully sparse, many people napping or isolating them into their own little safe worlds with headphones.

“We going to be able to find these guys before they kill again?” Jackie asked.

“It’s possible,” Marvin dated to hope, if only to keep Jackie from being robbed of it. “They have a pattern and Logan’s pretty good with those.”

They went quiet for a little bit as the train shot down the tracks.

Marvin could only watch Jackie thinking, and he didn’t like the look on his face. They’d all had that look at some point in their _“career”_ for differing amounts of time. For Henrik it had been in his office, with his alcoholic stint, for Logan he’d almost killed himself with a lack of sleep from his horrible nightmares. Marvin had been forced into a psychiatric hospital for three years.

It was the look of slow realization that their world was twisted and more horrifying than anyone could have prepared him for. Where logic didn’t exist and people were even more evil than the amalgamated horrors they communed with.

People either survived it and stayed on the team as _“well balanced members of society”_ or they were consumed by their madness.

“Hey,” Marvin called out gently, waiting for Jackie to look at him. “What’s on yer mind?”

“How—” Jackie started before sighing. “Nevermind.”

“No, it’s okay,” Marvin told him. “Job’s rough and people are the worst, if this is about the job then yeh need ta talk about it. Trust me it’s not somethin’ ta bottle up.”

“I was going to ask about those tattoos on yer forehead, but if it’s personal yah don’t have ta tell me,” Jackie admitted.

“I use them ta hide runes so I can cast my magic,” Marvin admitted. “Usually I don’t have ta actually use ‘em, I can fake it with a bit ‘a slight ‘a hand or some elixir I can make in my office’s closet. Otherwise they’d be killin’ me slowly.”

“Can yah get rid ‘a them?” Jackie asked in concern.

There was a long uncomfortable silence and the train reached their stop.

“No,” Marvin sighed as they got up to head back home. “Let’s go an’ talk ta the brains in a jar, maybe they can use the garbage we got.”

“Least we have a name, Henrik and Logan have all those books right, those thin’s have ta be in there somewhere right?” Jackie asked.

“If they are I’ll give yeh the info,” Marvin promised as they headed towards Jackie’s apartment.

“Those were some pretty cool tricks, though,” Jackie finally complimented. “Never got ta tell yah earlier.”

“Really?” Marvin smiled.

“Yeah, was that real or just tricks?” Jackie smiled back.

“Which would impress yeh more?” Marvin asked proudly.

“Either way yah pulled four animals out ‘a hat yah had shoved up yer sleeve,” Jackie reminded.

“Then yes, it was all sleight ‘a hand,” Marvin smiled proudly.

“What?” Jackie almost looked starry eyed. “How?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Marvin cackled, the mood lifted a little as they walked down the darkened streets back to a safe and normal apartment, and a safe and normal brother.


End file.
